Toyota plug-in Prius at a charging station; the car is due on sale in 2012. Photograph: Toyota

It's time to hold up our hands: electric cars just didn't live up to the hype during 2011. The much-trumpeted Year of the Electric Car was pushed out of the picture like a Tesla Roadster in a suspect Top Gear trial.

With just a few models available and a charging infrastructure still yet to get off the ground, sales were understandably slow for models that were significantly more expensive than their petrol equivalents.

Even government grants of £5,000 for those purchasing electric vehicles (EVs) failed to sweeten the deal. Only 1,052 claims were made during 2011, and critics will point out makes little progress towards reaching the 1.7m electric cars the Committee on Climate Change says we need to see on UK roads by 2020.

So there's no denying that, much like my New Year's Day, EVs got off to a shaky start. But, also like that hazy Sunday, the outlook for low carbon cars is improving by the minute.

A huge shot in the arm will come from the new models set to be released this year. Not only do they cover pretty much all car-buying demographics; crucially, they have also dispensed with the factor that surveys consistently reveal as the biggest barrier to EV take-up: range anxiety.

A new generation of plug-in hybrids will allow you to cruise around the city using all-electric mode, but then switch to a petrol engine if the need to tootle up to Scotland should arise. Suddenly, concerns about the next charge point will disappear.

Yes, the price is still high compared with most family cars: the Vauxhall Ampera, UK cousin of the Chevrolet Volt, and Toyota's plug-in Prius are set to hit UK forecourts at about £29,000 and £26,000, respectively. And Fisker's glamorous 2012 Karma – Top Gear magazine's Car of the Year no less – is costing US customers $103,000 (£66,000).

But at least for the Ampera and Prius, drivers can expect significantly lower running costs than for standard vehicles, a fact that brings the tipping point for EV adoption that much closer.

And let's not forget pure-electric cars are also getting better and better. Tesla's "Signature" Model S, slated for release in the middle of this year, looks set to travel 300 miles per charge, albeit at a pricey $92,400 (£59,000). The standard Model S will still travel an impressive 160 miles on each charge – almost double the current market leaders – for $57,400 (£37,000).

Automakers are also adapting the traditional model. Drivers can buy Renault's ZE electric range, which during 2012 will include the two-seater Twizy quadricycle, Fluence family saloon and the Zoe super mini – but they will only rent the batteries.

Not only does this slash the cost dramatically; it also waves goodbye to fears of expensive battery replacements and plummeting resale values.

The supporting infrastructure is also expanding rapidly: Source London has 263 charge points now, but will have 1,300 points by 2013. Chargemaster is spending £10m to ensure its POLAR scheme has 4,000 installed by the end of the year, while SSE, Waitrose, Little Chef and Welcome Break are just some of the household names getting in on the act and deploying charging points at workplaces and public spaces.

A significant number of these will be so-called fast-charge points, capable of more than halving the standard eight-hour refuelling time for electric cars, while a fifth of the new POLAR chargers will be wireless. Yet more barriers to take-up will be hurdled.

The government has committed to the £5,000 Plug-in Car Grant until the end of March, but no decision has yet been announced on extending it for a further year.

Kelly claims the grants are wasting public money on a niche technology that only the rich can afford. Perhaps he should talk to the Toyota executives who are forecasting 60,000 plug-in Prius will be sold in the first year before arguing that the technology will never take off.

The danger is that, with austerity measures biting, the UK grants could prove vulnerable, since there has been such a low take-up to date.

But considering how much electric cars have improved in just one year – not to mention their vast potential for reducing transport emissions – removing support now would be almost as foolish as predicting a year too early that the market is about to take off.

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